RE:z620 / Xeon E5-1680 v2 / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC / HP Z Turbo Drive 256GB + Intel 730 480GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB / HP OEM Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Here's an inconvenient event:
Over the past several months, the startup of this system had gotten very slow: it would start Windows and then have a quite long- 30_ seconds black screen. My thought was that the Win 7 installation on the HP Z Turbo Drive that was transferred from another z620 (2X E5-2690) was becoming "unhappy" in some way, from errors and high fragmentation. However, once started it was very fast.
As I was preparing to reload the Windows and programs to the Z Turbo, I noticed on the HP support site an update for the z620 BIOS, so I decided that I may as well have the latest.
I ran the BIOS .exe update in the usual way, which I've done several times on my five z-series systems without problems. It backed up the current BIOS and then flashed the new version. I had a message that the update was successful.
However, the system quickly shut down on it's own and immediately restarted itself- without pressing the power button. This produced no error signals or monitor start, spinning the fans and liquid cooler up to top speed. I had to hold the power button for a hard shut down.
I tried a Samsung 850 Evo (SATA) that had Win7 installed for the other z620, but no signs of life. Forum poster Brian1965 suggested a power supply fault and testing with a DVM, but I'm not sure how to test the +5V rail. The power supply is also only about 1.5 years old.
The CMOS was reset the button three times and I've had the CMOS battery out with no effect. I've removed all the drives in the hope of simply booting to BIOS. But, no luck > As soon as the power cord is reattached the system spins up to maximum.
I tried a technique listed by the HP virtual assistant that involved holding down the Win key+B 2-3 seconds and starting,. That is supposed to revert to the previous version BIOS, but no luck. I had hopes for that technique as the BIOS update sequence showed the original BIOS had been saved.
> Is there a recovery jumper like the "crisis recovery" jumper listed on z820's?
So far, I have been unable to determine if the z620 has a BIOS recovery jumper. On z820's there is apprently a "crisis" jumper. There is something called "E16 ROM RCVRY ROM Recovery header/jumper", but I can't find the E16 designation on the z620 system board layout. There is a set of three two-pin jumper blocks near the SATA ports including one that has three pins on the block and two two-pin jumpers in a stack, but I can't so far find out their use.
There were no passwords set.
This is complicated to diagnose as on one hand it appears to be corrupted BIOS and on the basis of the increasingly long startup, a gradual motherboard failure.
In case it was the problem, the Z Turbo Drive was transferred to z420_3 (E5-1607 V2) and then to z420_1 (E5-1620) and ran beautifully. From pressing the power button to ready is about 30 seconds. The Passmark Disk score in z420_1 was 13903. The z420_1 BIOS was 3.15 and only 3.6 or newer will recognize M.2, so I made the most careful BIOS update to 3.91 in history,..
What's next?
Thanks!
BambiBoomZ